From tomatoes to trees
Very simply put, my day can be described as a series of actions with the intent of producing an effect: by writing this post for example, I am communicating something to the reader. However, not all actions produce a simple reaction: in some cases a side effect in also involved: I am writing this post on my Mac, and not all the power that the machine requires is transformed in computing power — a small amount of it turns into heat. This is not a desired effect (except in the winter season when it could be a good thing).
Is it possible to produce some kind of value through side effects? I believe so.
Producing recursive value
In some cases our society is able to produce value from a side effect of another process. For example cutting trees and working wood produces sawdust (side effect). A lot of sawdust. Many power stations have recently been built where I live (Morbegno) and most of them burn sawdust to produce electricity.
This process creates a lot of heat (side effect) that is used to heat water. The water is taken into homes to mitigate winter cold. In this case there is the side effect of a production which becomes the raw material of another process and is used to bring value in another sector. I often see many such side effects being produced also during my work as a developer.
Handling of side effect in the developer’s work
In order to maintain my focus I use the pomodoro technique. It is a useful way of ignoring distractions and stay focused on a single task. There are a lot of apps that can help you manage the “tomatoes” and not long ago i tried Forest. It’s a nice and simple app that includes some social features to share your “tomatoes” with friends.
But the characteristic that I appreciate the most is the possibility of planting real trees after a number of tomatoes. Trees are planted by Trees for the Future and I recently planted my first tree. In this way I make use of the side effect of the time during which I am writing code and I transform abstraction into trees.
Scaling side effects
Ok planting a tree with a lot of tomatoes is a nice, and rather strange, thing. But are there other, more disruptive ways to handle side effects? What about scaling this concept and turning many of side effects into something good for society? In the company where i work, Mondora, we have found an amazing system.
When we first approach a new customer, it often occurs that this customer will ask us for a discount. Instead of negotiating on a traditional discount, we propose to allocate part of the generated revenue to activities that produce value for society. With one customer for example, we requested them to plant 140 trees through an Italian company that offers this service, so that the value of the trees was equal to the discount we would have given. This is our general path, and we constantly receive much positive feedback from our customers. In this way we don’t only create value with our IT work, but we also develop a viral concept that allows the explosion of the energies that until now were wasted.
Have you or your company found a way of producing value through side effects? Get in touch and let us know!
